Wake Wood (2011)

[The Walking Dude]

"The parents of a girl who was killed by a savage dog are granted the opportunity to spend three days with their deceased daughter."

This is the first film from the reborn Hammer Studios(whom I dub Mallet productions - a soft rubbery imitation of a real Hammer),that has actually interested me.

[GL]

That plot description needs a little more meat on it, since just what you put up I can't find the horror in that at all. I can see it going in about ten different directions, but unless there's more there I don't know which of the ten it's going, and that troubles me deeply.

[The Walking Dude]

That synopsis is from IMDB,I guess it is a little vague. Though I think the idea of losing a child is horrific in itself.

The back cover states that a couple grieving their daughter's death relocate to the town of Wake Wood,where a group of villagers practise Pagan rituals,one of which is the power to revive the dead.

[HiderInTheHouse]

Oh shit, sounds like a mix between Pet Sematary and The Wicker Man.

[The Walking Dude]

That's exactly what I thought.

Hopefully I'll get to it over the weekend sometime,and report back.

[GL]

Ah, good old plot twist #7. Usually I don't have to go that deep to guess where a movie's going, so kudos to that.

As long as they keep that grieving crap to where it belongs (briefly, in the first five minutes or so) and spend the rest of the time on the creepy village and the rituals like it should, this one might not be so bad. But, then just about every single British horror film is so maddeningly slow and lifeless that it needs a year's supply of adrenaline just to move up to 'dreary,' I'm still not entirely sold yet.

[HiderInTheHouse]

Yea, let us know how it was Matitou.

[Jen]

Creepy, with a fair amount of gore, and sympathetic characters. I didn't love the ending, and it does borrow from other movies pretty freely, but I thought it was surprisingly well done.
The only real issue I had with it (other than the ending) is that the father buys into this idea WAY too quickly. So it feels a little forced. But I will give this a 4. It's more of 3.5, but I will be generous because I really liked it, despite its problems.

[GL]

Caught it last night, and indeed like just about all British horror films in the last twenty years, this was too slow to mean much of anything. There was just far too much time spent where it never got out of a dreary, agonizingly slow pace that never invites a viewer in and instead puts them to sleep before anything horrific can happen. A focus on keeping the crucial plot information out of the leads' hands despite everyone knowing what's going on doesn't help, as the cliche of everyone but the leads knowing what's going on because they live there but don't want to reveal what's happening and instead act ominous about it is just tired and needs to be done away with, as here it just ran up the running time incessantly with every villager seeming to come to them and warn them against doing this. Instead, this gives the whole first half the feeling of a Fantasy-based Drama, not all that entertaining. Though the daughter's rebirth doesn't directly lead to anything horror-based immediately like it should've, those are definitely somewhat fun and entertaining only since something happens, and while it's gory enough, not enough to save it.

I'll go with a 1 since I'm feeling generous and the last half did have something going on.

[stinger]

Not the best ending but I still liked it quite a bit, I give it a four.